


Red Square

by powerandpathos



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 19:51:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9139762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/powerandpathos/pseuds/powerandpathos
Summary: Before moving to St. Petersburg, Viktor takes Yuuri to Moscow at Christmastime, and they visit the Red Square.Inspired by thisofficial art.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Tumblr @yoisecretsanta gift exchange for @lordzarcock, and copy-edited by [sub_textual](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sub_textual/pseuds/sub_textual)
> 
> Originally posted [here](http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/155044590759/red-square).

December in Moscow is Christmas red: red spires, red brick, tent fabric and beaded lights and fireworks. It is red, and it leeches colour from a dark sky. The city square is painted like a scarlet candle and, standing on the rink, skin hovers between lustred pink and the colour of cranberries.

Wooden stalls hug the edge of the rink, roofs edged with snow, and the GUM store looks like a lit-up gingerbread house. At this time of year, the coldness has a smell, a feel, that is something other. It settles in your throat, on the inside of your nose. It is a cold that can be dangerous. It is a cold that begs you closer.

It is the first time Viktor has been like this with Yuuri since Barcelona, and he can feel the pull of Yuuri like he is the cold. He feels like he needs to pull another layer on beneath his coat, beneath his jumper and his shirt. A pair of gloves. He looks at Yuuri, skin fuchsia in the light, eyes wide as they roam, and feels the stab of it in his chest. This is dangerous.

‘Are you cold?’ he says. His hand is around Yuuri’s waist, and there is something about the easy placement of it that makes Viktor feel like his heart is shivering. It’s innocuous; it means, really, nothing. He has not touched him so easily outside of competition, under the guise of a coach.

He could say it is for his safety, so no one thinks to slip a hand in his pocket, or pull the ring from his finger with little more than a brush against his shoulder. Viktor could say it is so he doesn’t get lost in the swell of tourists and Moskvichi that ebb around them.

He doesn’t. He says nothing. Yuuri says nothing when Viktor puts his hand on his waist. What must they look like, he wonders, and he cannot get the image out of his head. How no one would mistake them for being anything other than what they were. How no one, really, would mistake that touch, where there is no space and only heat between the press of their bodies, for anything other than what it is.

‘I’m fine,’ says Yuuri.

He says the words like an afterthought, detached. His eyes are looking at the rink; they are moving to the stalls that smell of sugary, hot _gluhwein_ and local meat breads and pastries, to the women selling pendants and decorated Faberge eggs. His body has a tilt to it, like it would move away if it could and lose itself in the market, like the only thing keeping him there is Viktor.

Viktor holds him tighter.

‘You can take my scarf if you want,’ he says.

‘No, I’m—’ Yuuri’s face relaxes into a smile as he turns his head up to meet Viktor’s. ‘I’m fine. Honestly. It’s not that cold.’

‘Really,’ says Viktor. He presses a gloved hand against Yuuri’s cheek, and feels the flash of cold skin where his wrist is uncovered against Yuuri’s face. ‘You’re not cold.’

‘A little,’ Yuuri says. ‘It’s no different to Hasetsu.’

‘Wait until we get to St. Petersburg, _then_ you’ll be cold.’

‘I thought you wanted me to be warm,’ says Yuuri. ‘Or are you looking for excuses?’

They wander through the stalls, glancing at local wares, and Viktor stops. They pause beneath the awning of a makeshift Starbucks where the baristas shiver over vats of hot chocolate and _gluhwein_ , sickly sweet and seeping the smell of spiced oranges and cinnamon into the chill.

‘Excuses for what?’ Viktor says. He picks up one of the reusable mugs for sale, the ceramic painted as _matryoshki_ , bonneted and rosy-cheeked.

‘You know.’

Viktor bites the inside of his cheek. He hands two mugs to the barista and gestures to the mulled wine. Music is playing loud from a nearby stage and through the speakers nestled in some of the stalls, and Viktor can barely hear Yuuri’s voice.

He makes sure he can hear Yuuri’s voice.

‘I’m not sure I do,’ he tells him.

Yuuri just shakes his head as Viktor passes him a mug, the painted ceramic growing warm in their hands. At the exchange, Viktor lets his fingers slide against the inside of Yuuri’s wrist, where the skin is bare.

It astounds him that a touch, like this, where Yuuri can feel the pressure of it where his blood swells through him, can make sense. Can make more sense than words. Words, Viktor tends to use wrong. He has said things, before, that have fallen off his tongue like chewed up glass, made him flinch and curl away from himself in something close to loathing. Yuuri has taken and trembled at and cried at Viktor’s words before.

Viktor feels the shivering slide of a ring on his finger, and open arms, the impact of their bodies on the ice. Movement has replaced the sound of their voices, and Viktor realises what it has brought him—how easy it has made things. They have come to understand each other, so fully, because the brush of fingers across a wrist speaks for them in a way that can make—can replace— sound and nuance.

They have made a language between the two of them, and it feels like a secret, and Viktor doesn’t want anyone to know it.

They sip at the mulled wine, saccharine and cloying on their tongues, and Viktor says nothing as Yuuri’s finger lock into his. He says nothing as his heart careens with a silence that he is sure must be loud. He cannot quite believe he gets to have this, that it takes almost nothing. He has to give, almost, nothing.

‘Let me try yours,’ says Yuuri, holding a hand out for Viktor’s cup.

‘But it’s mine.’

‘I’d give you mine.’

‘But I don’t want yours.’

Yuuri shifts. His breath curls in front of him, thick white clouds like bursts of fine, fragile snow. ‘You sound like Yurio,’ he says.

‘Tormenting?’ says Viktor.

‘Unyielding,’ says Yuuri.

Viktor has a moment to smile—just a moment—and he is stepping forward.

The kiss is a breathless thing, and it feels weightless. Viktor feels it building in the pit of his stomach, and he tastes, on his lips, the heat of star anise and the ache of the sugar and the winding, soft traces of vanilla. There is something—deeper, lingering, hesitating at the back of it. Viktor has a hand in Yuuri’s hair, growing long, and he feels the grip of Yuuri’s arms settling themselves around Viktor’s back, pulling him in, closer, letting him taste and find what he is looking for.

Viktor takes what he offers him; he will never, he knows, turn anything down from him. He will take just as freely as he knows he would give. Nothing is his anymore; nothing is Yuuri’s; it is all _theirs_. The comfort, and the resounding barrier of that knowledge, feels warm like the wine as it spills down his throat and slides away coldness; it makes him feel alive and heated from the inside.

Viktor licks the taste of it from Yuuri’s tongue, from the roof of his mouth, pulls at the sugar sweetness of Yuuri’s lips, growing full and red between his teeth. When fireworks are blooming in loud bursts in the sky, flowers made of light and ash, trying to match the stars, Viktor can taste what it is—it is Yuuri.

It is a thing that he feels he has been looking for and has, at last, found.

Is it possible that you can ever know anyone this fully?

Yuuri is staring at him when they pull away. The flush of his cheeks is wonderful, and he looks—he looks—

Viktor swallows. ‘What did you think?’ he says. His voice is rough stone, sound scraping across it.

Yuuri blinks like he’s been blindsided, like the music and the fireworks have become too much, and he has stepped away for a moment. But Viktor knows it is not the music—and it is not the fireworks. He has done this to him, and made him look like this.

‘What did I…’

‘The wine. You’ve tried it now.’

Yuuri blinks again. Viktor can see his tongue working in his mouth. ‘It tastes…’ Impossibly, he flushes deeper. ‘I liked it,’ he says.

Viktor feels like he is still kissing him, because something in him is still singing. He can’t tell if he is smiling or not; he thinks he probably is, something wide and helpless, something that has surpassed the surprise, the warm flash of shock. He thinks he should probably stop being surprised by this—by Yuuri.

‘We can… Do you want to skate?’ he says, pressing down the urge to step forward again, to take Yuuri’s face in his hands, to spend the darkening evening like this.

Yuuri’s eyes wander to the rink—they have been all evening—but there is something hesitant and wavering about it.

He says, ‘People might know. We might… draw attention to ourselves.’

‘So?’ The thought of it is sparking in him—that people will see, again, who they are. How they are together.

‘I want to just—be us. Be lost here, like everyone else.’

‘Lost?’

‘Hidden,’ says Yuuri. ‘I want…’

Viktor knows what it is to be unable to say what he means, and what he wants. With Yuuri, Viktor knows he probably wants too much, until the want is brimming and spilling over, sitting in his throat, until everything ceases but the need of it—just some lasting, primal desire that doesn’t feel primal at all. It feels like he’s made of it.

He reaches out, and takes Yuuri’s free hand. He hasn’t worn gloves since Barcelona, and Yuuri’s hand is impossibly warm in his palm from the wine. Their rings glint in the flash of red lights. They are walking before he knows it, handing rubles over for two pairs of ill-fitting skates that rub at the ankles and pinch at the toes. They leave the mugs with the vendor, and the first step on the ice together is certain and sure, and Viktor feels it like the certainty of doing everything with him, of knowing that it is _right._

Around them, couples skate, hands linked, pulling each other by the arm. There is nothing fast, nothing hurried about it. No one is watching anyone, and Viktor looks at Yuuri, and he is watching Viktor.

‘Like this?’ Viktor says. They’re moving in slow, careful loops around the rink. They could be more—do more, but Viktor doesn’t think Yuuri wants that. He wants this in the simplest way he can. He wants the anonymity, to be like everyone else. Not forever. Just for a moment. Just while they can indulge in the newness, the difference of it. At the Gala, every gaze was on them, and that was like being breathless and having too much air, choking on it, having nothing but it and each other.

Now, Yuuri pauses, and his face is pressing into Viktor’s neck, and there is no space between them, and Viktor doesn’t want there to be.

‘Like this,’ Yuuri says.

Everything around them is moving, and there is red light, and sound, a vibrancy thrumming the air, sweet and acrid and cold. But standing here, ice beneath their feet, the stillness is enchanting. It feels like nothing exists beyond _this_ , Yuuri sweet and warm and soft in his arms, and if this is all there is, then Viktor will be content with this for the rest of his life.

**Author's Note:**

> Please click 'kudos' if you enjoyed!


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